I will agree with your last statement if you change "evil" for "wrong". Evil has the problem of being able to be both a noun and an adjective, while wrong can only be an adjective. As such, evil implies some sort of objective existance, while wrong doesn't. Frankly, there is no objective version of what is "wrong" and "right", but there's a fairly wide consensus subjectively.

But Matthews IS making a decent point within the context of what he said. His point was that you all spend too much time going "Al-Qaeda is evil" and not enough time looking at what motivates them. That's the other problem with the "evil" label - it gives you an excuse to forgo thinking.

Taking a gun, putting it the head of a 7 year old girl and pulling the trigger is wrong and evil. Taking a needle full of blood infected with AIDS and injecting it into someone is wrong and evil. There's a very clear line of what's wrong and evil.

You're using a subjective frame and calling it objective. Doesn't work.You're applying several words ("accurate", "insanity", "sane", "reasonable" and "evil") to subjective frames of reference that are either non-applicable (in the case of "accurate") or a subjective description (in the case of "insanity", "sane", "reasonable" and "evil").

Here's a way of improving your argument. Firstly, define your terms.

For instance - insanity. In this case, I would assume that by "insanity" you mean "causing harm to civilians for the purposes of furthering a cause" (note: if I'd used "others" instead of "civilians", then the American government and army would come under that definition too, which is why defining your argument's terms is so important).

Secondly, you have to remember that when referring to subjective frames, "accuracy" only applies to the accounting of an event. So long as Al Qaeda's frame includes "we killed x number of children" in their account, they are accurate. Reasoning and rationalisation cannot be described as "accurate" or "innaccurate", simply because they do not pertain to events or objects in the external world (which is all an objective frame can reference).

So if you wanted to maintain your argument, firstly you'd have to define what a good frame (or perhaps sanity) is, and then demonstrate that they do not fall into that category. And even then, your argument only works given that your opponent accepts your definitions (which most of us probably will).

Sorry... just the basics of logical arguing. I spent 6 years learning and codifying argument technique... so yeah...

Just to return to the point of "evil", I'll point to an example from history which is sufficiently old that we can all view it with a measure of objectivity. During the Middle Ages, the Church defined Muslims as "evil", because they interfered with their ability to trade spices and other goods directly (and also because there happened to be an abundance of lordly heirs with no lands to inherit because their siblings had already inherited them), and so they went on their Crusades. In return, the Muslims called the Christians "evil" for invading their lands, killing many of their people and so on.Which was right?

I should also point out, that in an objective frame there is NOTHING except action and objects. No judgements, no opinions, no descriptions.

An Al Qaeda operative kills 3 children.

That is objective reality. What you make of that is subjective.

"Slaughter", "murder", etc - anything that evokes emotion, all subjective. Even "insanity" is not an objective term - anything describing the mind is subjective. Anything that is outside a VERY strict (in fact, rigidly strict) adherence to pure events and happenings is not objective.